The Hunger Games Fanfiction Wiki:Author's Guide
Welcome to The Hunger Games Fanfiction Wiki Author's Guide! This guide will introduce and show you the ropes of writing and sharing your Hunger Games fanfic on the wiki! It's quite lengthy, but we're sure it will help you! Signing up for the wiki We suggest you sign up for the wiki and create an account. This way, it'll be easier to maintain the User Library and for other users to get to know you more. But, you don't exactly have to make one and you could publish your fanfictions as a wikia contributor or anonymously. To sign up, go to the top right corner of the page and click Sign Up. You'll be taken to a 'Join Wikia' page where you just follow the steps to create your account! Starting your story Types of stories *The most common type of fanfiction written here is probably competition-based, which is a story that involves around a character (or characters) and their time during the Hunger Games. *You can also write stories called 'One-shots' which are stories that are usually one chapter long. A one-shot could be a story taking place over a short period of time or a long period of time. For example, a one-shot can focus on a certain character and their time after winning his/her Games. Or maybe it can focus on a character and what happened before he/she was reaped. One-shots can be humorous or dramatic, whichever the author chooses. *Another type is a story not involving the character's time during competition and has more than one chapter, excluding it from being called a one-shot. For example, character's childhood or a victor's life after winning. Anything but during the Hunger Games. Series You can also create a story series with any number of stories you choose. A collection of series could be found here. When creating a series, the stories must be on a seperate page while the main series page is alone. Each fanfiction must have this: Template:Series that shows who the author is, what series it is from, and which book(s) precedes or succeeds it. The main series page could show the main premise or plot of the stories, a list of all the stories, and/or optionally a list of the main characters. Your series can have three fanfics or ten! It's your choice. Separate chapter pages Usually, all of the chapters are posted on one page, but sometimes the chapters are really long and if you'd like, you could post one chapter at a time on seperate pages each. The main story page will then have a Table of Contents that could list all the links to the chapters. When creating a chapter page, the title must be "/Chapter 1" or 2 or 3, etc. You must not forget the " / " in between, which links it to the original story page. Optionally, you could include this template: Template:Chapter-nav on each of your chapter page. It is a box with "Previous chapter" and "Next chapter". You could put it at the top of the chapter page or at the bottom or both and it will help readers navigate though the chapters more easily by clicking to go the next chapter when done or going to the previous chapter. Titling Having a title for your story is one of the most important things! Be creative about it, and make sure it's got prominence or some sort of relevance to the story. A dull and boring title will not attract readers and be sure that another fanfiction in the wiki does not have the same or similar title as yours. Ratings If your story contains some material that isn't suitable for a certain age, you could use the PG rated template on the top of the page. Collaborations Yay! Everyone loves collabs! Collaboration stories are fanfictions written by more than one writer. It could be two writers collaborating on one story together and taking turns writing a chapter each. If you ever want to write a collab, try asking another user on the wiki and get right on it! Character development Characters are really the most important thing in a fanfiction. Without them...who will your story center around? You should already have in mind what your characters should be like. You could either make a separate page with a list of all the characters in your story (like this one) or an entirely different character page (like this one). The first one, which is all of them in one page, is usually for all the other characters you mention once or twice in the story. A character mentioned in the story only once or twice shouldn't have its own character page while the main protagonists and the main antagonists could. But if you're too lazy to write up an individual biography, then you could just leave all the characters (main or supporting) in a page. OR '''you're just really lazy and don't feel like creating any character pages at all. That's fine too. Character bios An entirely different character page could be made for the main character. This page must include this infobox: Template:Character which just features some statistics about the character. It should also feature the character's biography, personality, appearance, etc. There should be a separate section on the page about the character's time in the story he/she is featured in. The way you write what happens to them in this section could be: *If it is of a tribute going through the Games, you could write what happens to him/her while writing the story and then you gradually add on more info in the section as you continue to post more chapters. *You could give an indication of what will happen to your character beforehand. This might reveal spoilers, though. *Keep the section blank until you finish the actual fanfiction and post afterwards. If you want to quote something a character says, you could use this template: Template:Quote. Canon characters included in your story '''do not need their own pages, so creating a Katniss Everdeen or Peeta Mellark page is off-limits! Spoiler alerts Be careful of what you put on your character pages. If you post too much, you could be revealing what happens in the story and spoil the reader. To prevent this, use Template:Spoiler at the top of any page that could possibly reveal spoilers from the story. Even when you're spoiling purposely, we'd appreciate it if you use the template just in case. Canon or non-canon? Whether or not you choose to focus your story on canon characters (like Katniss, Peeta, Gale, etc.) or non-canon characters (made up by you), it does not matter. You could write a story with an entire cast of canon characters or a story with completely made up characters. An example of where you could use canon characters in a story is something like a re-imagination. You could write a story on what the 74th Hunger Games went like in your own opinion. You know, re-imagining it and making Cato win instead of Katniss and Peeta or something like that. Re-imagination is like an alternate story of what would've happened if you were the author! Character pictures and book covers A lot of articles here have a picture of the character(s) or a cover for the story. If you do want a picture for your character, you could simply just go to Google pictures and look for a desired picture. But then again, if you're too cool for any of that or you just simply don't want any, it's completely optional! Categorizing your pages Categories help organize the wiki and makes pages easily accessible. Your own category The most important category is your user category, which is just a category titled your username. That's right, you've got your own category! Yay, feel special! Anyways, for example, "Category:Leafwhisker" contains all the content created by Leafwhisker. Your user category must be in every single page you create, whether it's a story or a character. Therefore, if a certain reader wants to read other articles you've created, they could go to your category page and browse through your work. Every single user on this wiki planning to publish their story in it should have their own category. Your category page must be categorized under "Category:Users". To access all of the user categories, go to the User Library. Categorizing your fanfictions and series When publishing your story, it must be included under the following categories: *Your user category *Category:Fan fictions *''Optional: If it has a certain setting, it could be under the categories Category:District 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, or 13. In the case of a collaboration story, it should be included under the user categories of all the writers, not just one of them. If you are creating a series, it must be included under the following categories: *Your user category *Category:Fan fictions *Category:Series When publishing a separate chapter page, it must be included under the following categories: *You user category *Category:Chapters *''Optional: The story or series category. Categorizing your character pages All character pages created, separate or a list, must be included under the following categories: *Your user category *Category:Original Character *Category:Males or Category:Females (separate only) *In either Category:District 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, or 13. Your Opinions Matter: Feedback Feedback from you, the reader, should definitely help the author for future writing. If you like a story, leave a message on the fanfiction's talk page! It'll make the author happy! If there's a certain part or character you like, let them know. Be honest and give them the hard truth! But don't be too harsh. Be specific on what you're saying if you're criticizing them. You can't be like "this story sucks, in my opinion. Sorry, just being honest :)". Adding that smiley face in the end won't help either. Anyways, give the author some constructive criticism. Mentioning something they could improve on for further writing and citing your opinion or suggestion on how they could improve will be really helpful. If you're gonna be harsh, say why! Some Rules To Follow *No spamming *No flaming *Respect other users *Watch your language! *Have fun :D If YOU have a suggestion for some stuff being added to this, please post them on the talk page. We gladly appreciate any kid of feedback on this! Any more questions regarding getting started on this wiki, don't be afraid to ask our lovely admins! They won't bite :) At least we don't think so...